Young Birds From Strange Mountains (2024) at Schwules Gay Museum in Berlin, DE

Thai artist Eda Phanlert Sriprom (Berlin) exemplifies this intersection of tradition and innovation, as she mastered the techniques of dyeing and sewing Buddhist fabrics, tasks traditionally reserved exclusively for cismale monks. Her work simultaneously challenges established norms by being an interactive loving phallic talisman (in Thai, Palad-Kik). By doing so, Eda's work reflects the complex negotiations of identity for queer Thais, as they weave between tradition and modernity, spirituality and sexuality.

The Title “Young Birds From Strange Mountains" is borrowed from a poem by the Vietnamese gay-closeted poet Ngô Xuân Diệu (1916-1985), a correspondent member at Akademie der Kunste during GDR times. Some of his poems were censored for depicting same-sex intimacy, which at the time did not align with a social communist society. "Young Birds" can be interpreted as representing the experience of queer people living in societies where they struggle to find belonging, yet still leave a lasting mark on history. It can also symbolize artists, archivists, and activists emerging from "strange mountains", continuously reimagining ways of living differently.